This paper presents findings from a field study of 24 individuals who kept
diaries of their web use, across device and location, for a period of four days.
Our focus was on how the web was used for non-work purposes, with a view to
understanding how this is intertwined with everyday life. While our initial aim
was to update existing frameworks of ‘web activities’, such as those described by
Sellen et al. [25] and Kellar et al. [14], our data lead us to suggest that the
notion of ‘web activity’ is only partially useful for an analytic understanding
of what it is that people do when they go online. Instead, our analysis leads us
to present five modes of web use, which can be used to frame and enrich
interpretations of ‘activity’. These are respite, orienting, opportunistic use,
purposeful use and lean-back internet. We then consider two properties of the web
that enable it to be tailored to these different modes, persistence and
temporality, and close by suggesting ways of drawing upon these qualities in
order to inform design.